Organizations that develop and employ enterprise software (e.g., software that is employed in a large organization and that models the organization's business enterprise to address an enterprise-level issue) typically include three environments: i) a development environment where developers create applications; ii) a quality control environment where quality specialists test the applications created by the developers to reduce the number of errors present in the applications; and iii) a production environment where end-users employ the applications to perform their work. End-user tests are typically performed in either the development or quality control environments, before the applications are employed in the production environment. A persistent problem in such organizations is that many flaws in the applications are not perceived until the applications are employed in the production environment on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, most enterprise applications do not provide a single point of contact for an end-user in the production environment to submit feedback on an application, such as suggestions for enhancing productivity and improving application usability. Typically, a user executing an application in a production environment must leave the application and submit his feedback through another, different, program or medium. For example, to date, feedback is generally submitted through several different channels, such as e-mail, web forms, web forums, and informal conversations. In addition, these communication channels fail to provide an easy way for end-users in the production environment to provide a visual representation of the feedback. In particular, end-users do not have a simple mechanism for transmitting the application screen and for referring to a location on the screen.